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[separa
] tions between parents and children
will be carried out."
The separations did take place; the only children
with parents were some young girls who followed their fathers. Of the 110
children under 18, 37 were boys. They were chosen because of their foreign
birth; only one was French born. As with convoy 13, about 20 percent came from
Warsaw.
Convoy 15, August 5,
1942 (Beaune-la Rolande) Like the preceding two, this convoy was com
posed of parents and their adolescent children. Their younger children were
held at the camps while Berlin decided how they were to be deported. They would
not have to wait long: their turn for deportation would come in less than two
weeks. Convoy 15 had 221 deportees under age 18, most foreign born.
(Twenty-five were born in Paris, compared to over 40 in Warsaw.) A majority
119-were female. Most had been living in Paris or its suburbs. The
average age dropped considerably compared with the earlier convoys, with fewer
older children and more younger ones. Only 11 deportees were born in 1924 or
1925, while 38 were born in 1929, 7 in 1930, 4 in 1931, and 2 in 1933
these last 2 less than 10 years old.
Convoy 16, August 7, 1942 (Pithiviers) Convoy 16 was the
last of the four convoys made up mainly of adult Jews taken in the Vel d'Hiv
roundups in Paris. Of a total of 1,069, 643 had spent the intervening weeks
interned in the Pithiviers camp, and 426 in Beaune-la-Rolande. Many were
parents deported with their children. There were 315 children under 18, just
over half (162) girls. As in convoy 15, the average age of the children
continued to drop: the majority were born in 1927 and 1928, 67 were born in
1929, 11 in 1930, and 1 in 1931. At the same time, the Gestapo in
Orléans prevented more than 150 boys between the ages of 12 and 14 (born
between 1928 and 1930) from being included in the convoy because it did not yet
have authorization from Berlin for large shipments of children.
Convoy 17, August 10, 1942 (Drancy) Convoy
17 was made up almost exclusively of German Jews, many older than 50. They had
been held at Gurs, in southwestern France, in a camp in the Unoccupied Zone.
Only three of the deportees were under 18.
Convoy 18, August 12, 1942 (Drancy) Convoy 18 deported
mainly Germans and Austrians who had been held in a number of camps in the
Unoccupied Zone: Gurs (600); Noé (161); Récébédou
(173); and Le Vernet (88). The only child was 17 years old.
Convoy 19, August 14, 1942 (Drancy) Convoy
19, like the two preceding convoys, was made up of many internees from camps
the Unoccupied Zone. Three-quarters came from Les Milles (236);
Récébédou (63); Noé (56); and Rivesaltes (395).
Only 2 of the 117 adolescents came from these component groups; the rest were
part of a group of 223 people added at Drancy. This latter group was mainly
from Parisian families arrested after July 17. Of the 117 youths, equally
divided by sex (60 girls; 57 boys), 72 were born in France. The telex from the
Paris Gestapo to Eichmann in Berlin and to Auschwitz notes that for the
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial Serge Klarsfeld
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